School swap

By: Kate Pastor, The Riverdale Press
February 11, 2010

They exchanged breakfasts of rice, porridge and eggs, for pancakes. They traded chopsticks for forks, and took time off from Nanjing Foreign Language School near Shanghai, China, for classes at the Marble Hill School for International Studies.

Ruixin (Queena) Chen and Gloria Chou are the latest Chinese students to participate in a two-week exchange program between the two schools that has been going on since 2005. Last year’s exchanges were cancelled due to H1N1 concerns.

The program aims to expand students’ worldview, one long flight at a time, and will be sending five students from Marble Hill to study in China for the third time this March.

When her classmate arrived for her first day of school, Queena had already been in the Bronx for four days, sleeping in a room belonging to the 11-yearold sister of Angel Acosta, a 16-year-old junior, who will soon travel to her country.

“It’s a very cute room,” said Queena, smiling while noting that it was painted pink and was full of dolls.

Apart from the décor, she had already accumulated a long list of differences between the United States and her country.

“Teenagers in China, they do housework if parents ask them,” she said.

Not that Angel has no chores of his own. His job? The dishes. Queena said she has been chipping in to help.

Miguel Montalvo is one of the students who has already traveled to China, and points to a bulletin board in the school’s hallway with pictures from his trip two years before. Each has a long caption describing the contents of the photo.

His dorm was at a high school for part of his stay, and he was quick to remember the arduous schedule students there kept.

“The school was from early in the morning, from like 8, until like 9 at night,” he said.

Though he had already been to the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Mexico, his trip to China succeeded in officially blowing his mind.

“I never experienced something like China,” he said.

Though he learned phrases like “thank you” and “it’s pricey” before takeoff, he knew little of the language, and yet, he said, people treated him like a celebrity in the streets.

The experience of strange food (“The Chinese food here is not real,” he said), language and culture, has permanently instilled the travel bug in him.

“The world is out there for you to see it, you know,” he said. “I want to see everything.”

His tales of the faraway land has inspired his brother, Kevin, to travel there this spring.

Kevin was one of those who spoke at the welcome breakfast at the school.

Bonnie Maldonada, a 15-year-old sophomore who is also among the five students who will soon go abroad, is providing her sister’s half of their bunk bed for Gloria to sleep in.

“She’s cool. The language barrier sometimes is different, but we make signs sometimes, and we know what it is,” Bonnie said.

The barrier, if there is one, is mostly on the American side. Despite some wrinkles, the two Chinese students speak plenty of English and say it is a staple of their education.

“English has become a door opener in China for the young to live their dreams,” Queena said.

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